C.O.P Suit

C.O.P Suit was inspired by the COP15 climate summit. The brief was to propose solutions for, or to comment on, the ongoing climate debate – using wearable technology and design as a medium.

The C.O.P Suit is an experiment in personal protest wear, designed to address the by now almost ritualised stand-offs between police and demonstrators – what has ironically been described as the ‘folk dance of disorder’. The suit is composed of an armored protection sleeve connected to a megaphone-mounted helmet, offering protection as well as the possibility of voicing commands, orders or simply generating noise. The suit is designed as a purposefully ambiguous and (slightly) ironic artifact, echoing the fetishistic visual language of protesters and police alike – a comment on the similarity of the means each side employs.

The C.O.P suit is designed to be completely self-sustainable – utilising kinetic energy from common gestures in a protest situation (the fist thrust triumphantly into the air, the swinging of a baton or the force of a strike to the armor) to power the megaphone, making rioting hard on the ears, but easy on the conscience.